Who Put Up $125,000 Before Nolan Wells' Cause Of Death Came Back

**Tony Brueski** (0:01)
This is Hidden Killers Live with Tony Brueski and Robin Drake.

**Tony Brueski** (0:09)
$125,000 in reward money is on the table for information leading to an arrest and conviction. But there's no arrest, no suspect, and no evidence a crime was even committed.
Crump, the attorney for the family, announced the independent autopsy results at the NAACP National Convention in Chicago, not in Mississippi, where the investigation is actually happening.
Does the machinery around this case serve the truth or the narrative? That's the question I think a lot of people are starting to ask here. And we're going to ask it too. Again, and I want to say we don't know. We will follow this case wherever it goes. I'm not vested, nobody here is vested in it being this way or that way. But I am vested in people not being taken advantage of, of people not being used for another agenda to tack on because it's a lot of public attention right now.
Sharpton and Tyler Perry put up a $100,000 reward at the funeral. Terrell Owens added another $25,000. But a reward for arrest and conviction? It assumes a crime was committed, which as of right now, other than some conflicting statements of teenagers, he was going to go hang out with girls and he was going to go hang out with boys. When you publicly offer six figures before the autopsy is even back, you don't have the digital information back. A lot of assumptions are being made that Snapchat was deleted. That really has not been proven yet. It's all conjecture. All of it is conjecture. Other than the independent autopsy we have back, which is now inconclusive. But all of this, the reward offer, all of that came out before even that was out. What message does that send to a grand jury pool? Eric?

**Eric Faddis** (2:02)
I think that there are multiple problems potentially with these reward offers. Look, I get it.
Folks stepping up and trying to get justice and offering their means that they have to try to help out this family. I completely understand that. On the flip side though, the concern for me is that, especially if the reward is for arrest and conviction, well, somebody hears that and they want $125,000. How do I get it? Well, I got to give information. What type of information? The type of information must be one of a criminal nature. It could be of an innocent explanation because then I don't get the reward. I'm worried that folks might tailor what they're reporting in a way that steers in the direction of them getting $125,000 regardless of whether there was a crime actually committed.
So I think that putting that qualifier on it, that arrest and conviction is how you get the reward, I think it really gives me pause about the reliability of such information that might flow from that.

**Robin Drake** (3:03)
Yeah. I face this in the Bureau a lot of times too.
It's a confirmation bias or incentivizing because you're trying to fulfill something to get something in return for it. I don't know why you'd need it to begin with because why wouldn't people come forward with this? There's no motive to hide this information in a lot of people around there. So it's challenging, no doubt.
I hope they don't need to do that. But like you, it's fraught with some challenges just because you then have to sift through what was the motivation to forward this information. Was it the money or was it truth, justice? I mean, I think it adds potentially a complication. But also, I did research on this one too. It's common to do this. It's not uncommon for it to be incentivized before there's actually a target.

**Tony Brueski** (3:58)
It is interesting how it could steer it in different ways when it comes down to the motivations of everyone there, everyone involved. We've talked about this a little bit. People have been seemingly, I mean, you'd think there'd be more video. That would be out by now. But one of the big reasons that I think we've discussed here, like why would someone if you have video, even if it's not nefarious, it's just people partying out on the island, that can still tell you something. But a lot of people don't want to reveal that if they have any of it because a lot of them are college kids and a lot of them are drinking and a lot of them are involved in things. And if, oh, suddenly the video comes out of you drinking, it might not abode too well. And that person might be going, I'm not losing my scholarship. I'm not losing my place on this team or this or that because of this shit show that went on over here or this accident that went on over here. I had nothing to do with it. I'm not going to sacrifice everything I've done because I had a couple of drinks on a boat one day and something went horribly wrong over here. So there's a lot of independent levers that are being pulled for different motivational purposes here. I want to address a quick comment I saw there where it was Crump asking white people to come forward.